The Surroundings

¡Hola!

Today was the second day at the orphanage. If I just tell you that we painted again, this would be a very boring blog. So I'll describe the surroundings to you:

We leave homebase each day at 7:45am in a rickety, old van. The orphanage is in a rural area, and it takes about 30 minutes to get there. We take a dirt road through forests and farms, which have cows, goats, horses, and dogs hanging out by the side of the road. Today we drove through the forest/tree area and saw a sloth! How cool is that. But I couldn't get a good picture because he was too far away. We've seen so many different types of trees and flowers too . . . and bugs! I've got a few bites and stings, but now I'm borrowing bug repellent from another volunteer. (My bug spray got confiscated at DIA because it was 4 oz. instead of the 3.4 oz. regulation.)

We arrive at the orphanage around 8:15am and it's usually sunny in the mornings. Because they are in such a rural area, they have lots of open space to play. The views are incredible from there, but because there are constantly rolling clouds, you can never see the tops of mountains/volcanoes. We work in the sun, which can be brutal because of the humidity. I can hear lots of birds and bugs buzzing all around when I'm painting. Occasionally there'll be a monkey making some noises up in the trees. And the house across the street has a rooster that crows. There are lots of bugs everywhere and unfortunately they get stuck in the paint. Tomorrow we'll be putting the second coat of paint on the house and the bugs will be sticking to that layer too. Ugh.

The boys were great today. They helped us paint for the majority of the day. One of the volunteers brought his guitar and they loved it! I took some pics of all of them playing.

We got back to homebase for lunch, then had our cultural lesson: cooking! We made tortillas from scratch (it's pretty easy) and then used them for empanadas. The cooking lesson was followed by a game of futbol! Greivin had reserved an indoor soccer field for us and we had a great game. (I played goalie.) Good thing it was indoor, because the rain came as soon as we were dropped off. I also managed to check out a few shops nearby, got some good pics of the town, and a bunch of us just went out for ice cream. It's been another fun-filled day!

Love, Laura